


Always Somewhere Halfway Home

by LookingForDroids



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Blood Swap, Ficlet, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: Aradia grows up knowing that her destiny is to die.(Featuring Heiress Aradia, Seadweller Sollux, and Rustblood Psionic Feferi. They make it work anyway.)
Relationships: Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido/Feferi Peixes
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17





	Always Somewhere Halfway Home

Aradia grows up knowing that her destiny is to die. 

That knowledge is the flip side of the Heiress’s privilege and power – weighty as the expanse of ocean overhead, a pressure to which she is uniquely adapted. Even Sollux can’t follow where she dives, down to the lightless depths where needle-toothed fish hunt and haunt the ruined colonnades of Alternia’s fallen cities. She swims among them, running her jewel-tipped claws over water-worn frescoes and sunken treasures, statues eroded into facelessness and crusted with salt. History is heavy, and there is so much of it down here. It’s comforting. There’s a strange peace to be found in knowing that whatever her fate, the sediment of years will blanket her just the same.

But sometimes she surfaces.

Sometimes she climbs the rocky, spray-drenched path to her palatial hive to find Sollux obsessing again over his detachable helmsrig, as though perfecting efficiency and energy yield might do anything to change the way the Empire conducts its affairs. She pulls him back by his bony shoulders and spins him in his swivel chair, and he blinks up at her, hunched and tired, relaxing into the feeling of her claws running through his messy hair. If she tells him to rest, he’ll ignore her. If she lies to him, he’ll know, but even if he didn’t, Aradia doesn’t lie.

“We won’t save her that way,” she says, and he nods. He isn’t stupid, he tells her. He knows that peaceful reform won’t fucking work, that they’ll just take the energy gains and burn their batteries out faster. Lowbloods are an endlessly renewable resource, even the ones that royalty have taken a shine to. But they’ll need a ship, if they want any of them to make it out of this alive, and someone will need to pilot it, and it’s better if –

Better if FF can fly herself out and still be free, he says, even if the Heiress falls and her second in command goes down fighting beside her. 

She’s given up arguing with him about that. He’s given up arguing with her. If there’s a way past this doom of theirs, she can’t see it from where she stands – but that doesn’t mean, Feferi would insist, that there isn’t a way.

And sometimes when she rises from the waves, it’s not to her hive, but to the white sands of a forsaken beach, far enough away from any settlement to be safe for lowbloods and troublesome Heiresses alike. Those are the places where Feferi wanders, with her wild hair and wide smile, looking for wounded creatures to catch and care for and maybe keep. Sometimes, when the skies are cloudless and the waves limned with moonlight, Aradia even finds her watching the sea. On those nights, she’ll stand as soon as Aradia breaks the water’s surface, leap from her perch on the rocks to run down the shore, barefoot, letting her net and trident fall to the sand behind her. Too trusting, maybe – but the air crackles with her power, and there’s a feral joy in the way she pulls Aradia in for a kiss, catching her lower lip between sharp teeth and drawing a bead of royal blood. It isn’t anger, that bright defiance of rank and propriety. It doesn’t need to be. Her hands rake down Aradia’s back, and time sits lightly for a while.

Sometimes Sollux is there, sitting on those rocks at Feferi’s side, his whole gangly body angled towards her as he clutches her hand in his. He looks weirdly vulnerable in those moments, out of his element without husktop or hive in sight. This isn’t his domain. It’s Aradia’s only in name, and she knows how quickly names are scrubbed away in the face of wilderness – but Feferi, who belongs here, pulls both of them in like a riptide and doesn’t let go. They fall together where surf meets sand, an awkward tangle of legs and elbows, need and fear. Aradia can tell that the claws on her hips belong to Sollux, because he worries about cutting too deep; she knows by the heat that it’s Feferi’s bulge coiling slick against her inner thigh, and it’s Feferi’s teeth skimming the fragile fin of her ear, careful this time not to hurt. Caught between them, it’s impossible to want the silence of the depths more than she wants the ache of life. 

Sometimes she looks up at the stars and believes in a future yet to be defined.


End file.
